Joel Bulkley
Credit to all the individuals, businesses, sports teams, organizations who have donated food, household goods, water, money or volunteered to help our friends and neighbors in Western North Carolina recover from Hurricane Helene. Lots of exceptional things are being done, and a lot more will be needed.
The media landscape continues to shift dramatically. DirecTV and Dish plan to merge. Yahoo Sports and The Athletic (NY Times) are partnering to develop a free website with more women’s sports content. Yahoo said seven of their ten most read stories last year were about women athletes.
Bally Sports will continue NHL broadcasts of the Carolina Hurricanes after dropping most baseball teams except Atlanta. Plans for Venu Sports, a streaming combo of Fox, Disney, Warner Bros/Discovery for $40/month, remain on hold after FubolTV sued to stop it. Disney plans a new direct to consumer streaming sports service starting next year via ESPN+.
Local papers continue to struggle. The Herald-Sun (Durham) and News & Observer (Raleigh) print about 1,850 (that’s why you never see more than one copy at a grocery store) and 14,500 copies daily. Durham has about 2,687 paid subscribers (print and electronic) and Raleigh 36,000, according to 2024 postal reports. Cost for an annual subscription is $1,819.48.
My own experience with CSN here shows it’s hard to get and keep electronic readers after doing a print paper for years despite the quality of the product even if it’s free.
Saw “Bull Durham a new musical” by Ron Shelton, presented by Theatre Raleigh at Duke last month. It was fun and entertaining, the audience loved it, but I doubt it’s headed to off-Broadway. It’s not an exciting toe-tapper like “Diamond Studs” of years ago. My MVPs were Annie (Carmen Cusack) and Luke (Nik Walker).
ESPN’s latest pre-season hoops poll had Kansas 1, Alabama 2, UConn 3 and Houston 4. Duke was 8, UNC 11. Early bracketology had seven ACC teams in the NCAA Tournament, something the ACC commissioner certainly would like to see amid speculation the ACC is considering a reduction in conference games from 20 in an effort to upgrade non conference schedules throughout the league. UNC and Duke have challenging non conference games, many others not so much.
Looking for a complete list of weekend TV college football games? Check the Thursday edition of U SAToday. It has games listed by time and TV network with point spreads on another page. WNCN of Raleigh has good coverage of football with video highlights at the smaller schools in the Triangle (NCCU, Shaw, St. Campbell, Fayetteville State) Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m.
Despite news reports from ESPN, Sportico, Axios Raleigh about the likely sale of the N.C. Courage, the future of the team and the NCFC is anything but clear. The Courage are selling season tickets for 2025. One of the Courage investors is Capitol Broadcasting so don’t expect any news there. The Courage are the backbone of soccer in the Triangle and no one wants to see that change.